Lucas crept up on the door dividing the sixth and seventh levels. Shuddering as he looks at the arm, it is still bleeding. Muttering to himself, “That’s at least one I will have to fight immediately.” Activating Inspect he looks at the goblin arm. “84 hit points and the health bar shows that this thing is already down to about 20%. I should be able to take him out with a little flame to the face.”
Walking into the training area, Lucas calls out to Rose “Rose, give me a 30 count and then activate the doors between the seventh and eighth floors and the eighth and ninth floors as well. Hopefully, that will draw a few off, and I can take out whoever is left up here easily. I promise I won’t blame you if it doesn’t work. After about 3 minutes, provided the doors close, open the door here. If the door doesn’t open, I will know there was an issue with the other doors, and I will come back, and we can talk about it again.”
The lights blink once in response to Lucas.
Heading back to the door, Lucas counts silently to himself. Preparing to fight, Lucas casts mind over matter, haste, and windshield. Preparing for a big fight, Lucas mentally prepares himself to cast flames. As his count reaches 175, the door starts to move slowly. Not wasting a moment, Lucas casts “Flames,” at the poor Goblin who was stuck in the door before he could get his arm out.
Hardly a second passed when the goblin went down. Releasing the flames, Lucas investigated the stairwell past the door.
“Shit,” Lucas said. Feeling very screwed, Lucas quickly counted the goblins that were still gathered on the steps. “Fourteen, I have fourteen goblins I have to take on before I can do anything else.” As a goblin archer drew back on his bow, and the rest of the goblins charged at him, Lucas cast “Flames,” Moving his hand back and forth, the goblins caught fire as he strafed the fire across them.
“Ugh,” said Lucas as a flaming arrow from an archer hit his body armor. “Good thing I got this body armor from the storage room,” thought Lucas. Stepping on the arrow that his flames had caught on fire, he stopped casting flames and instead cast “Icebolt!” The first icebolt hit the archer’s shoulder. Lucas opened and closed his hands and cast another icebolt. Managing to hit the archers head, the archer slumped over. Looking around at the goblin grunts that had been caught in the flames, a few of them were still moving. None of them looked like they were in good shape, but rather than chance that some of them were smart enough to feign death, Lucas cast “Flames!” again. Holding it for six seconds, he estimated he had done enough damage to kill even a hale Goblin.
Circling around the steps, Lucas came to the door to the eighth floor. It was fully closed. Moving back up, Lucas went to go check the large storage room that made up the seventh floor. It was quite obvious that there were no goblins on the seventh floor as he looked across the room. While the room was simply enormous, the size of more than four football fields, it was empty. There were scratches on the floor where it was apparent that the storage racks had been dragged off to use somewhere else, but otherwise, the entire room was empty.
Quickly walking around to verify his guess, Lucas managed to find a few bones, but that was about it. Walking back into the area Rose controlled, Lucas asked, “Is there any way I can get you back online quickly for the seventh floor? It appears to be unused by the goblins, so we have complete control.”
Two quick flashes let Lucas know it wasn’t worth the effort to bring her back online on the seventh floor. “In that case, I’d like you to go ahead and close the rest of the blast doors. At this point, the Goblins know I am coming, and I want to try and break them up as much as possible.”
A quick flash of the lights let Lucas know Rose was on it. Vaguely hearing some grinding noises in the distance, Lucas decided to take a seat, have a drink and a short rest. Thinking to himself “The longer I can keep them in a high alert state, the less attentive they will be when I finally do open the door.”
An hour later, with full mana and a small nap under his belt, Lucas spoke to Rose “Rose, give me 3 minutes, and then I want you to open the doorway from the 7th to the 8th floor. I’m going to try and repeat what I did there and take out as many as I can.”
The light flashed once, but Lucas didn’t even notice it as he headed down to the proper doorway. Setting up, Lucas renewed his buffs and headed over to the side that would be opening. As soon as Rose started the door moving, Lucas cast “Flames,” and directed the spell through the gap. Holding the spell for 4 seconds, which takes roughly a third of Lucas's mana bar, he backs up and lets the door open the rest of the way.
On the other side of the door is nothing. No goblins, no archers, no nothing. Surprised at the lack of a fight, Lucas quickly checks the door to the ninth floor. It is almost closed. It didn’t manage to finish closing due to a bone being stuck up against the wall, so there is about a 2” gap. Wide enough for an arrow, but not much else. Figuring his back was about as protected as possible, Lucas turns to inspect the 8th floor. It’s obvious with a brief inspection that the goblins had been living on this floor and using it as a base. There are several huts built from the remains of the storage racks and other equipment that had been left here. But there doesn’t appear to be anyone in sight.
Checking hut to hut, Lucas doesn’t manage to find any more goblins. Circling back, Lucas does a quick bed count. Twenty. There are twenty beds. That means it is likely there are twenty goblins. “I’ve already taken out 14, that means there are probably six left,” said Lucas to nobody in particular.
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Wandering around the encampment, Lucas verifies there are no hiding goblins around the edges. Unable to find another soul, Lucas heads back to the doorways. Lucas walks up the steps until he gets to the sixth floor and then he tells Rose “Go ahead and open the doors between 8 and nine as well as 9 and 10. There are only small areas for me to check for Goblins, and there are only six left.”
Lucas hurries back down to the appropriate door and waits for Rose to open it. As the door slides open, Lucas sees a goblin arm shoot forward. Casting “Flames!” over the arm, Lucas holds it for 4 seconds to ensure he takes down whatever is on the other side. Walking through the gap, Lucas notices there are three more goblins that are down.
“Owwwhhww.” Hearing moaning, Lucas pulls out his daggers. Not seeing any movement, Lucas quickly executes the three goblins to ensure their demise.
Lucas quickly spares a peak for the ninth-floor materials storeroom. It is in a mess of a state. The racks are fastened better to the walls then they were on the seventh floor, so they are still present, but the materials themselves have been scattered everywhere. There are steel ingots that appear to be rusty as well as what appears to be several corroded copper bars. “Good thing I don’t need the materials in good shape,” says Lucas as he picks up the ingots. Placing them back on the proper racks, Lucas looks to see if he can find the raw materials Rose mentioned for the Comlink. Casting Sand, copper, plastic, and silicon or scrap circuit boards. Finding the sand and plastic, Lucas was unable to quickly locate any bins labeled Silicon.
Not wanting to turn around, to ask Rose questions, Lucas descends to the 10th floor. As he descends Lucas starts to hear some noises, it becomes obvious there is something waiting for him. Something that can plan and strategize. Lucas activates stealth.
Peeking around the corner, Lucas sees three goblins. They are bigger than the previous goblins he has faced. Risking an inspect, Lucas sees their names. Row who appears to be an archer; Blac who appears to be some sort of mage based on his high intellect stat; and Boss, whom, based on the name, Lucas assumes is the goblin chief. Row has a bit over a 100 health, Blac has just over 60 health, but Lucas notes he has mana showing. Boss has a whopping 250 health. Knowing he is going to have to conserve his mana to take out Boss, Lucas creeps up behind Row. “Always kill the adds first,” whispers Lucas to himself, “that way the DPS is lowered while you attack the big bad.”
Hearing Lucas, “Gaph mas!” shouts Boss. Unable to get the true backstab on Row, Lucas goes ahead and plunges both daggers into him anyway. While not the backstab he was hoping for, it still knocked off almost 50% of his life. Unwilling to be hit by an arrow, Lucas grabs Row’s bow and starts hitting him with his dagger. As Row falls, Lucas turns and is hit in the side with a splashing fire spell from Blac. “Blac is a fire mage,” thought Lucas. Dropping to the floor and rolling manages to put the flames out, but not before they ate up 10% of Lucas's health bar. Turning to Boss, Lucas fires off a burst of flames to distract him while he runs back around the corner into the stairwell. With just a sliver of himself exposed, Lucas begins casting. Quickly finishing, he shouts “Icebolt!”
As the icebolt flies towards the mage, Boss manages to get himself between the bolt and the mage and it didn’t even take off 10% of his health. Worried and slightly upset that he was unable to connect with the mage, Lucas casts “Slow!” on Boss. Keeping Boss at a distance, Lucas tries to position himself with a clear shot at the mage; unable to find a clear shot, Lucas instead decides to dart in and finish it in Melee. Before Lucas could make it to the mage, Boss catches him.
Hearing him coming, Lucas spins around and casts “Flames!” at his eyes with one hand. Holding a dagger in his offhand, Lucas dart in towards Boss and manages to get a good hit on Boss’s arm with his dagger. But he didn’t get off scot-free, Boss managed to sideswipe him with the club he was carrying. As he is flying through the air towards the wall, Lucas sees that the mage is preparing for another cast. Casting “Slow!” on the mage, Lucas manages to interrupt Blac’s cast, but Boss is once again at full speed.
Lucas thought to himself as he tried to get up. “Boss is doing a good job of protecting the mage. I’m not going to get a shot in on him until Boss is down. I’m going to have to take him out as fast as possible and hope I have mana left for the mage.
Refocusing his attention, Lucas begins to cast an Icebolt at Boss. “Icebolt,” Lucas quickly follows up with a “Flames.” As he had hoped, the quick temperature swing caused the Icebolt to explode, doing more damage than it had done on his own. With Boss on fire and at 65% health, Lucas just had to win the war of attrition.
Keeping Boss between himself and Blac, Lucas backs away and holds “Flames!” on Boss. Knowing it’s not enough, Lucas only has enough mana for twenty seconds of flames. Even so, with the long cast time on Icebolt and the need to keep away from Boss, it’s his only real option.
As the flame spell enters the 5th second, the boss falls to the ground. Unable to redirect quickly enough, Lucas wastes the last of his mana on Blac, who he’d been keeping behind Boss. Lucas guessed that Blac would be immune to fire as a monster fire mage, so Lucas dodged around Bosses limp form and heads towards the mage at full tilt with the intent on entering melee range.
Coming up on the mage, it was a race against time. Blac casting some sort of fire spell, and Lucas prepared with both of his daggers. Blac struck first. Just as Lucas was about to plunge his daggers into Blac’s chest, the spell hit.
Blac knew some sort of concussive blast spell. With the small space between them, both Blac and Lucas were flung away. Looking to the unconscious Boss next to him, Lucas noticed the flames that had taken him down had damaged him until he was down to about 10% health. Deciding he should strike Boss while he had the opportunity, Lucas plunged his daggers into Boss’s stomach.
It was enough to finish off Boss. But Blac was still fighting.
As Lucas looked at Blac and at Boss, Boss seemed to disintegrate and Blac started to glow. Figuring this was some sort of elevation ritual to turn Blac into the new big bad for the dungeon, Lucas ran full tilt at Blac. Getting to Blac just before the energy from Boss could flow into him, Lucas plunged his daggers into Blac. Blac was finally down. But the energy was still coming.
Before Lucas could dodge out of the way, or really do anything else, the energy from Boss slammed into Lucas.